CoAi Chronicles
by littlelinguistme
Summary: A series of unreleated CoAi/ShinShi ficlets. Each chapter has its own rating.
1. Bones

**Bones** (K) 196

He studied her from across the kitchen. Watched her as she tiptoed around looking for the right size pot for whatever she planned on making them all for breakfast that morning. He thought she looked thin, the clothes on her back seemed larger than normal. He squinted. She also had bags under her eyes, a sign that she'd been overworking herself, _again_.

 _Ah, she's found the pot._ He mentally counted the number of people at their home this morning: He, her, and Hakase, would be eating, of course, but they had three visitors crashing as well, too drunk to go home last night. _Six people...and one of them is Genta…_

He made his way across the room and reached his arms around Shiho, taking the pot away from her. Placing it down on the counter, he wrapped himself around her, measuring. _No, that pot definitely won't do._

"You sit," he says in lieu of an answer to her questioning gaze. "I'll make breakfast today." _She needs some meat on those bones._

* * *

Omake: Shiho lets him, forgetting that there isn't an ounce of kitchen talent in his body. She ends up taking everyone out for brunch.


	2. Books

**Books** (T) 231

She wondered how long she would have to wait. Shiho had never intended on leaving him without a word for so long, but as the weeks dragged on by, decidedly without a stupid-looking detective bursting through her doorway, she knew her original intentions mattered less and less.

At first, it was the thought of teasing him that appealed to her. She had hidden a message in his favorite book, some rare first edition Holmes collection. She figured he'd find it within a day or two of her departure. It had, very clearly, her new address and telephone number.

Two weeks crept by and still no word came. That's when the insecurities snuck in. _He's probably thinking, 'good riddance.' I probably did him a favor leaving..._ Another week passed.

Then came the anger, the ' _fuck him, I don't need him to come see me anyway. My fucking debt's repaid and I'm better off without someone who only wanted me around because he needed drugs.'_

Now, she's just resigned. _There's no way he hasn't seen the note by now. He just… doesn't need me anymore..._

Little does she know that he's taken to reading her books in his spare time. Little does she know that instead of rereading Holmes, he's reading her science books and tracing the lines of her scribbles in the margins, missing her, and waiting for her to come back.


	3. Spin

**Spin** (T) 230

As the car spins out of control, her mind is perfectly clear. _Don't tense up; stay as loose as possible; let yourself be thrown around; protect your head._ Everything seems okay as she careens across four lanes of traffic, somehow not hitting a single other vehicle.

She considers praying but she'd never in her entire life been religious. Which god would even hear her cries, she, who until just recently has worked in the darkness her whole life. Instead, she thinks of her family, her precious little boy and the most darling girl on this earth, and their ever-doting father. She thinks of her own father, Agasa, who passed the year before.

 _Father I beg of you, if it is in your power, keep me safe enough to return to my little ones. If you can't, please help me watch over them._ She doesn't think she's deserving enough to find rest in the same heaven he's enjoying. A jolt.

The car has pitched over the median, flipped several times. The glass cuts into her. She hits her head anyway, despite her efforts. Her vision is blurry and it's hard to breathe. She can't even distinguish between up and down.

As her consciousness fades away, she thinks she can hear the sound of an ambulance. She thinks to herself, _'I can make it; I'm not that injured.'_ She closes her eyes.


	4. Play

**Play** (T) 325

Sometimes, she locks herself in their bathroom and he lets her. He knows that she's plagued by nightmares, and guilt, among other things. He understands that a fear you grow up with is one that is excessively, near impossibly difficult to isolate and let go of. When her fear of the blackest black consumes her, he steps to the side and lets her retreat to the brightest place in their home.

His heartstrings wrench when she turns on the faucets. By now, he's figured out that it's not that she wants the sound of running water to soothe her, but rather that she's hiding her sobs under them.

At first, it was so hard for him to leave her be. All he wants is her too-small body in his ready-to-comfort arms, but he now knows that it makes things worse. His touch takes her imagination straight to illusions of the loss of him, of a silver-haired crow that steals him away in a flash of steel.

Instead, now, he waits for the faucets - to let her release some of that negative energy, and when they aren't running quite as loudly, he begins. An aria written just for her. A simple, calming melody on his solo violin that he pours all of his love and adoration into.

Each pizzicato urged her to think of their happiness, with the detective boys, Agasa, Ran, the Kaito Kid. Each turn of the bow, he once told her, asks her to breathe easy and count out how many days it has been that she's felt completely safe. The double stops gently remind her that he is there with her, every perfectly synced note an echo of his stride beside her.

He plays, for her, until she is ready to come back to him. The sweet song makes its way through the walls, to her. It sends her strength, note by note, until the door opens and she is back in his arms.


	5. Foreplay (M)

**Foreplay** (Rated M) 391

They are having sex right now; she is sure of it. They are fully clothed and a roomful of people apart, but she knows his eyes are on her, stripping her of the deep red gown she had chosen for the evening. He holds his glass up, proposing a toast, and its path of descent in the air, she notes, is how he unzips her, slowly, carefully, deliberately. He raises his glass to his lips and his eyes lock with hers, tasting her and the expensive champagne.

She pretends not to see him until she's biting into a forkful of cake. Then, her eyes pointedly capture his and he can practically feel her lips sliding down his toned body, grabbing hold of him. She slides the fork out of her mouth in exaggerated fashion. She licks her lips.

They pass each other briefly, and their greetings are short. They don't need words; neither of them are into vulgar teenage fantasies. They are burning for each other, his hand on her back scalding as it slips slightly down from her waist. He leaves without actually breaching propriety but she imagines how he'd grip her.

She laughs at a joke some famous schmooze says. It's to hide her irregular breathing because she's caught sight of him and he's looking at her from behind his spot. He is standing and gripping the table and she knows he wants her bent over in front of him. He opens the guestbook to record a benediction in honor of the bride and groom and the image of him spreading her wide and taking her hard assaults her.

He is swaying, unnaturally forwards and backwards, as he chats with future potential clients and fans alike and she knows he is teasing. She wants him faster, rougher, than he can mimic in public, at his best friend's wedding where he is duty-bound to be best man. She presses her arms closer to her body, feigning cold but feeling his hands on her, drawing circles on her skin and worshiping her. She presses her legs together, her cunt dripping and desperate.

She leaves the party early, with excuses that she is tired. He tells the wedding party that he's worried about her, and shuffles awkwardly out right behind her, hiding his front with her body. He'd return later, but first...


	6. Cat-and-Mouse

**Cat-and-Mouse** (K) 314

She left him with a houseful of questions and no explanations. It is to absolutely no one's surprise that he became quickly obsessed, possessed even. When it became obvious that the answers to _'why did you leave'_ and _'where did you go'_ were impossible to find right from the start, he focused all of his deduction powers into making logical inferences on how she got to making the decision to leave.

He dove into unearthing her likes and dislikes, her relationships with others, how she acted at home, even what she possibly did in the privacy of her room. The things he thought he knew she enjoyed, he soon realized were only vague interests and passing hobbies. Each day he identified new fascinations: a hand for gardening, a knack at puzzles, a compulsion for organizing things by color. He even discovered she was harboring a disgustingly obvious crush on the Kaitou Kid that he surely had to have been dead to miss and yet somehow still managed to.

Everything he dug up, he took in, memorized. It soon lead to him finding traces of her existence in, at first familiar cities, and then new. He found very promising clues: notes in book margins in her hand, misspelled coffee-cup names - sometimes aliases, sometimes right,- a familiar tinkling laugh in a too busy crowd, and once, a glimpse of the exactly right color hair on a woman exactly the right build disappearing into a taxi.

She evaded his chase for almost a year. He never wavered, not even for a single moment, in that year, and when the game of cat-and-mouse finally ended, he found that he had no questions left. He'd answered them all on his own while trying to find her. Mission now accomplished, he couldn't find anything to say that felt right.

Rolling her eyes, she instead questioned him: "why did you follow me?"


	7. Beach?

**Beach?** (K) 278

Her left ankle was an angry red and horribly swollen and his arms were covered in tiny lacerations and dirt. They were climbing up a pretty unstable mountain, panting harder than was really necessary because the air was thin and their oxygen tank seemed to be leaking. They were covered in mud, night was falling, and they had no prospective shelters anywhere near them. Not bothering to pack a tent had been smart when they thought they'd be up and down the mountain with hours to spare.

But then they got lost. What seemed to be a trail had ended up most definitely not being a trail and now they were basing their directions off of the sinking sun, trying to find their way out of an Aztec forest designed to be impossible to navigate.

He was miserable. And by all measures, his new bride should be too. But she wasn't. In fact, he'd never seen her to be more alive and it astounded him.

Later, when they were getting fixed up in the local hospital, she confided in him. "I've spent so much of my life cooped up in a lab, surrounded by people who wanted my work or needed results. But here, surrounded by the trees and history, it was just me and and you and the wind. It was… incredible."

Despite it being not at all what he'd expected of a honeymoon- he'd wanted to go to a nice sunny beach resort in Cancun- he thought to himself, if this is what she wanted, he'd make it a point to plan a secluded nature trip for the two of them at least once a year.


	8. Nightmare

**Nightmare** (K) 317

Shinichi bolted upright in his bed with a most unmanly cry. The thirty-three-year-old violinist groped around his night table searching for the lamp switch. Finding it quickly, he flicked it on and began surreptitiously looking around his room, trying to confirm that it truly was his room. The light chased the shadows away and the only black corner was where his own shadow cast darkness over his wife, who was beginning to stir.

He clutched his chest as he tried to regain control of his breathing. His aforementioned wife groaned at his dramatics and reluctantly turned over to see what was wrong with her idiot husband.

She had zero sympathy for him, having just fallen asleep- her blurry eyes squinted at the red lines on the digital clock on her nightstand- twenty-seven minutes ago. "Literally, what is wrong with you?"

"It's horrible Shiho. I just had the worst dream, no, nightmare." He turned to face her fully, reaching for her hand. She let him tangle his fingers around hers even as she covered her face with her free arm to hide her eye roll. He continued.

"I was there and you were there, but we were small and hakase and these three random kids and the Kansai guitarist was there. And Ran and Suzuki but they were like 10 years older than us. And all of us were stuck in this weird time warp world or something and I just kept finding dead bodies everywhere and these men in black were following you. For twenty five years we repeated the same cycle over and over and over. I'd find a body, solve a ridiculous mystery or something but the culprits all looked the same. Oh god. And everyone was your cousin. So much death. No plot development. And I was with Ran of all people, she's like my sister how could- oh god. What a terrible nightmare."


	9. Cat

**Cat** (K) 337

Conan studied Ai from across the library desk they were both currently occupying. He made note to turn a page of the textbook he was currently pretending to read so he could go on staring at her through his bangs. He had to be stealthy or else she'd get weird.

He watched her bring her hand up to her face and, it seemed, used the back of hand to rub at her face? Eyes? The longer he watched her, the more convinced he was.

Ai was just like a little cat. A kitten, he supposed. In fact, she acted just like a cat Suzuki used to own.

Most of the time, she liked being alone and keeping people at a distance. He noticed Ai doing that too. She always hung back from the group and seemed to prefer watching the other kids play. And sometimes it would seem like she was always watching, soccer practice seemed to be her favorite. Every time he looked up during practice, she was there, in the classroom window, watching.

Sometimes, she got incredibly hissy. The cat, of course. Though Ai could be pretty terrifying too. He once was messing around in the classroom with his friends and kicked the ball too hard. It's not like it hit anyone or anything but it knocked Ayumi's stuff off her desk. Ai gave him a pretty severe scolding that day….

And yet, confusingly, Ai was also like a cat in how she was sometimes extra cuddly. He'd lost count of how many times she'd fallen asleep on him, head in his neck or lap with her face to the sun. He liked this side of her most.

And now with her unique way of rubbing at her face…

"Are you a cat?"

She looked up from her book. *There it is, the same judging look I used to get from this one cat I knew.*

"Are you stupid?"

Alright he probably deserved that, there's no way his girlfriend was literally a cat, but… still…


	10. Umbrella

**Umbrella** (T) 356

He found her at the lake's edge, an umbrella open and forgotten on the ground next to her, twirling slightly from the wind. The rain blurred his vision and he nearly fell as he made his way down the grassy hill towards her. He'd been searching for her long before the rain had begun and he hadn't had the presence of mind to grab anything on his way out.

She hadn't come home to him the night before and he'd tried really hard to not think the worst but the old fears had come back full force. They had never found Gin, and so they too had never found peace of mind. It was their firm belief that their constant sustained vigilance is what had kept them and their loved ones safe all these years.

That is, until last week. Hakase had gone missing. An overseas trip gone horribly wrong. He'd missed his flight home even though he had been on the phone with Shiho just two hours before boarding time telling her that he'd made it through TSA. Airport security footage had been tampered with and seemingly no one could remember ever seeing the dear old man.

They'd followed every lead. Everything led to a dead end. Except one. That lead to a dead body. And then another. First young Mitsuhiko, who'd said he was at band camp. Then, Suzuki, who was supposed to be vacationing in the Maldives. Then it was the waitress from Poirot and their elementary school teacher Kobayashi and Shiratori-keibu.

And then it led them to Hakase. Poor, poor Hakase.

His hands shook as they reached for her small shaking form. She was soaked from the rain but he knew the wetness on her face was from something more dear. She leaned into him but continued looking at daybreak above the lake. Her words wrenched at his very soul.

"I could just end it all. Right now."

Brokenly, he wrapped his arms around her trembling figure until he found a familiar metal grip. Somehow, she was colder than the muzzle.

He threw it as far into the lake as he could.


	11. Old Habits Die Hard

**Old Habits Die Hard** (K) 218

Shiho has had a lifetime's practice of controlling her micro expressions. Erasing facial expressions was easy but it was training the rest of her body to go against its most basic physiological responses that was difficult. But trained she had. She'd learned to read other's body language too.

How else could she have survived in the clutches of the darkness for so long?

And now, well into her second life, Shiho was reaping the benefits of all that hard work. Or rather, Ai was. Around her, the other members of the detective boys were deeply unhappy as she dragged yet another enormous pile of chips towards her.

The initial buy in had been only $10 but they were now four hours in and Genta, specifically, was on his sixth buy in. Mitsuhiko, who'd been playing it relatively safe, was only out $20 but Ayumi. Sweet, impulsive, fired-up Ayumi was $100 deep and not seeing a comeback anytime soon.

Conan was the last one in this round and he looked madly between her face, which betrayed nothing, and the two cards in her hand.

"All in." He sounded hopeful. She looked forward to absolutely crushing him.

"Call."

And as she dragged the final pot of the night towards her stacks of poker chips, she thought ' _old habits die hard._


	12. Inside (M)

**Inside** (M) 137

They were barely inside the house when he pushed her against the door, fist in her hair, lips on her nape. She braced herself against the door as he reached around and popped her blouse open, buttons tearing apart and clattering to the floor. A hot hand grabs at the back collar and pulls down, rough and uncaring. She winces as the fabric of the shirt razes her upper arms. She's now caught, face-first into a slab of glossed oak, with her arms trapped behind her back by the shirt that had not come all the way off.

Shinichi palms her front, hips pushing against her clothes from behind. He drops her skirt, her panties, and sheds his own shirt. She mewls for attention and with a growl he drags her across the room to bed.


	13. Prioritize

**Prioritize** (K) 185

He knew he had dropped the ball, _again_. He was missing dates and anniversaries left and right and he knew she was fed up with it. What would she have him do though? He can't just walk away from a case when people drop dead literally in front of him!

And, he stressed, _she missed things too_. She'd missed his birthday two years in a row now, disappeared for a whole week when he was awarded the biggest promotion of his life, chief inspector for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. She had known a month in advance when the pinning ceremony would be and yet..

Like they both understood each others' tendencies to overwork and forget everything around them but, he thinks, when are they ever even together? What are they doing _dating_ if they can't even be present for the other one's important days?

And he missed her.

He looked down at the bouquet in his hands and decided. Tonight, he would talk to her. They would work it out. Prioritize each other. And if she wasn't home, he'd go out and find her.


	14. Justice

**Justice** (T) 104

They'd pulled out all the stops, uncovered and divulged in painstaking detail every single pity-me-I-was-young-and-threatened sob story, much to her eternal embarrassment, and it still hadn't worked. There is only one truth and the truth is, almost a dozen people had met their maker in her creation.

Serial killer. That's what they'd called her.

Shinichi, permanently altered from his time as a child, and restored to his rightful age by the woman who the law decided hadn't suffered enough to merit redemption, felt betrayed.

What justice is this, that doesn't consider circumstance?

What justice is this, that refuses to see change and growth and regret?


	15. Piano

**Piano** (K) 211

They were all stunned upon receiving invitations to Ayumi-chan's junior recital. Apparently there are things that fourteen years of best friendship could hide. In a daze, the detective boys-minus-one entered the grand hall and sat in the front.

They all bore flower gifts, directed by Ai-chan who adapted quickest. There was an uncomfortable moment when choosing bouquets where they were all at a loss over what kinds of flowers and colors the intended recipient would like. Just how much did they really know about their sweet friend to be able to miss that she'd played piano since she was four (they learned that from the programme). Their guesses on her flower preferences were pitiful.

"She likes pink right? These carnations perhaps?" - Ai

"Girls love roses. It's gotta be roses." - Genta

"Just get the biggest bouquet. It doesn't matter what kind, she'll love the flowers regardless!" - Conan

"For this occasion, I'd say orange roses are the best. They mean 'I'm proud of you and I love you,'" he blushed. "I-in a friends kind of way of course." - Mitsuhiko

They ended up buying all of the flowers and as they sat in the audience and listened to her beautiful playing, they all resolved to learn more about her, determined to be better friends.


	16. Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows Challenge

**Hanker Sore** (T) 165 **  
adj. finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off.**

This was it. This was the last goddamn straw, He swore to whatever over-glorified deity was listening... He'd told her over and over and _fucking over_ again to not leave his books on the coffee or end tables. He'd just walked into their house after a particularly irritating day of work - no cases, just _p a p e_ _r_ _w_ _o_ _r_ _k_ \- and there they fucking were.

He grabbed them up quick and held them close. His poor lil Sherly! He tiptoed carefully over to the bookshelf and put his precious book back in place.

He tosses an impatient look at his sleeping wife. Shinichi eyed her draped over the couch. His gaze ran over her peacefully flawless face, past her delicate slender shoulders, over the worryingly small curve of her waist and up her generously round-

He paused. Maybe she'd like a sandwich when she woke up… He went into the kitchen to make her one, completely forgetting his last train of thought.

* * *

 **Dead Reckoning** (T) 236 **  
n. to find yourself bothered by someone's death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.**

Shiho Miyano sits on a Beika park bench under the shade of an old oak, biding her time until her boyfriend comes to pick her up. A soft breeze ruffles her soft curls and in response, she lifts a hand up to tuck a section of hair behind her ears.

A young boy runs up to her, offering a newspaper. Smiling gently, she gives him a couple hundred yen.

She flips through. A photo catches her eye. The local news section.

GENIUS HIGH SCHOOL DETECTIVE FOUND DEAD IN AN AMUSEMENT PARK ALLEYWAY is the byline. She huffs... er, well, she tries. Something seems to be holding onto her breath.

She adjusts her position on the bench, thinking he must have been doing drugs or something. _Young people these days._ Her eyebrows wrinkle in contrast to her thoughts. She suddenly feels very alone. Her heart races; she can feel it leaping through her head.

"Oi, Miyano!" Her boyfriend. She sits still, incapable of movement. He approaches her. "Shiho?" Kneeling, he worries, "babe, you ok?" And a hand touches hers and just like that, the spell is broken.

She looks up at her boyfriend's familiar pale face. His blonde hair is sticking to him. "Baby?"

She responds, "Ah, sorry, I.. I'm fine. I just, lost myself for a moment."

He considers her for a moment. "Okay… uhm, are you ready to go?" She takes his hand.

"Yeah, lets."

* * *

 **Gnossienne** (T) 190 **  
n. a moment of awareness that someone you've known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you've never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.**

He was always certain of where they stood… Until he wasn't.

 _Partners?_ He laughed. _What does that even mean?_

He took for granted that she would always be by his side -or, more specifically, leaning against a nearby wall while he crouched on the ground examining some corpse. Then one day, he looked over and she wasn't.

He started noticing her absence in all sorts of places. He'd come over for breakfast only to find the Professor eating alone. He'd hang back behind their friends walking home from school and turn to share an amused eye roll with her and find… no one. In class, his friends often found him complaining aloud to himself, as if there were someone to answer him.

They all wince. Every time.

He's stuck in a loop without her, like a scratched DVD that refused to move into the falling action, replaying the same scene, the afterglow of victory.

His friends look out the classroom window and easily spot her strawberry head. They find her there with another half-blood. They make a cute couple, the masses think. But poor, _poor_ Shinichi Kudo. He lost his chance.


	17. Nothing to Lose

**Nothing to Lose** (T) 161

"You're the one with a blade at my throat, so obviously you're upset."

Shinichi pressed the knife into his smirking suspect a little more viciously before snapping and hurling it at the wall opposite to them.

"Why don't you just wipe that stupid smirk off your face?" He threaded a hand through his hair in frustration. It had been _hours_ and his interrogation still had nothing to show for it.

"Smiling wasn't a crime last I checked, Detective. Or do those rules not apply in this big, top-secret, government torture room?" The redhead's tone _really_ rubbed him the wrong way.

"How are you so glib!? I have a knife to your throat! I threatened your life, your family!"

She sat in silence for a moment. He could tell she wasn't thinking about her answer, but rather that she was toying with him.

"Easy. I have nothing left to lose." Her manic smile would haunt him for the rest of his days.


	18. Change

**Change** (K) 140

She let him get away. The man who had done them both wrong dozens of times over had finally been cornered and she was supposed to play warden. Except she let him go. Even after she had specifically asked for thi- _Wait a minute..._

He rounded on her, incensed. "Is _this_ why you were so insistent?-"

"What? No, I-"

"-You were always going to let him go, weren't you?-"

"How can you say that? I-"

"He's a bad man, Haibara. He can't be redeemed."

"You don't need to tell me that, Kudo."

He turned his back to her, leaving. "I should've known. People don't change." He could feel her glare on him.

What he didn't notice were the tears of frustration even as she clenched her fists in silence, refusing to let on just how much his words had hurt.


	19. Bewildered

**Bewildered** (K) 381

"If you don't come out in the next five minutes, then I'm coming in."

She panicked at the sound of his voice. She hadn't made any progress on the antidote since the last time he'd checked up on her and there was evidence of her slacking off in just about every accessible corner of the room: the computer still playing the movie that she had muted while trying to pause, the blanket on the couch, the yoga ball in the corner.

She cursed herself. The old man had told her he was coming down earlier this morning and she had the brilliant idea to take a nap before tidying up. Now, she was frantically scrambling to throw away old styrofoam coffee cups and to pile papers neatly.

She was on all fours under her desk when she heard the knob turning and she froze at the sight of him. He gave her an inquisitive look and asked her what she was doing.

She sheepishly crawled out and put herself between him and her most offensive pile of trash. He observed her, frazzled and half-covered in sticky notes, and reached out to grab something sticking to her hair.

She flinched, waiting for a blow that never came. Instead, the Professor smiled down at her, determinedly ignoring her instinctive twitch. His voice, when he spoke, was soft and kind. "You've been very busy lately, haven't you? I was hoping you'd share the workload with me but I do respect that it's a project that's been in your family for quite some time now." He paused, laughing. "I admit, chemistry is a bit out of field for me too."

He gently untangled the sticky paper from her hair. "Let me at least help you with this, Ai-kun." The old man huffed and got on all fours. "I'll get this side if you want to take the desk area?"

She nodded, mute from bewilderment. This kindly old man had taken her in even after she had told him about all the misdeeds she had done. She kept expecting some kind of behaviour switch. Kept waiting for her to finally find that one thing that pushes him over the edge. Kept waiting for him to find some sense and kick her out. But it never came.


	20. Fog

**Fog** (K) 184

They peered into the thick fog trying to get any sense of where they were but all around them was nothing but patches of forest green covered by dense cold air. Shiho shivered.

"We have to wait for it to clear up. I can't see a foot in front of us..."

Shinichi picked up a nearby rock and tossed it in front of them. It immediately disappeared into the abyss.

"We'll never make it back like this." Shiho's flat voice added, "We're going to miss our flight." She glanced at her phone. "And my phone's almost dead, Shin. We don't have time for this. I _told_ you we didn't have time for this impromptu camping trip." She sneezed. "And I'm _cold._ "

He ducked back into the tent, zipping it up as he went. "Think of it as the universe giving us an extra day on vacation. It's not so bad right? We've got food, water, blankets… and we've got each other." He pulled his unhappy girlfriend into his lap. "I'll keep you warm, Miyano," his voice turned husky as he nuzzled into her neck.


	21. Underwhelming

**Underwhelming** (K) 386

Her silence was killing him. He didn't know why he kind of expected a normal reaction to come out of her but he did. But would it kill her to act surprised? For her to stand up in delighted shock? Give out a little gasp? Or even just drop her cutlery and stop spearing food into her mouth? Give him any indication that she'd heard him put his entire heart out on the line for her?

Even after four years of dating, his Shiho had remained a very difficult person to read. He thought he'd had her figured out recently but _clearly_ he was wrong. Several awkward moments of silence punctuated by quiet chewing passed them by.

He was sweating. "Shiho?" He begged her to end his misery. She raised an eyebrow as she took a sip from her wine glass and finally spoke as she set the glass down.

"Are you sure?"

"Am I sure? Of what?" She gave him a meaningful look. "Of course I am! Why else would I-"

"Ok," she said.

"Ok? Just that?" He shifted. Having all his weight on one knee was getting uncomfortable.

"Sure. Now get up so we can finish dinner. And give me the ring already." Her quickfire words took him aback but he quickly stood up and complied.

Once back in his seat, he looked at her uneasily, not really sure if she was happy or not. He didn't want to pressure her into marriage. His mind raced trying to come up with reasons why she would have agreed to marry him if she wasn't into it.

Shinichi worried most of the night but as dinner went on, he kept catching her staring at the ring on her finger. Her mouth would turn upwards ever so slightly when she caught sight of it. Even though he was still kind of worried she'd take back her acceptance, he took those half smiles as a good sign and relaxed bit by bit.

It wasn't until they were halfway into their car ride home that his fears were assuaged. Shiho took hold of his hand and squeezed him lightly.

"I love it," her grip tightened. "And I love you. So much." She laced their fingers together. "Thank you, for everything." With that, she sealed their engagement with a kiss.


	22. Break

**Break** (K) 188

Her voice breaks when she speaks, being unused for so long. He scolds her. "How long has it been since you went outside? Saw another person?"

She has no answer for him.

"Would it kill you to call us once in a while? I know you're busy and all but-" He continues on lecturing but Shiho tunes him out. She closes her eyes and revels in the sound of his voice. He has such a clear, sweet timbre. His speech has an almost musical quality to it that she so much en-

He has stopped. She lazily opens an eye to find him standing before her all impatience and exasperated. The side of her mouth stretched upwards. She's missed this. She's missed _him._

"Well?" He's waiting for an explanation. She answers him simply, truthfully.

"I've been _really_ busy."

He clicks his tongue at her. "Just because you're finding the cure for cancer or whatever doesn't mean you can forget your friends, or your family and most especially not your _boyfriend._ "

"You're busy too though."

"Yeah but I'm back now, so get dressed. We're going on a date Miyano."


	23. Sound

**Sound** (K) 209

He could hear it from halfway down the block, a sound that stopped him dead in his tracks, trapping him with a rush of discordant emotions.

He ran.

The young detective ran at full tilt to his house, past the professor's place, past his wrought-iron gates left unusually open, and past an unknown car, haphazardly parked in his own driveway blocking his family car in. He paused.

 _There!_ He pinpointed the origin of the sound. As quietly as he could, he entered his home. Creeping slowly, he ducked behind a coat-rack trying to get a glimpse into the receiving room. Something hanging on the rack shifted, making a jingling noise.

"Shinichi?" Abruptly the sound he had been following stopped. Caught, he forewent stealth and strode into the room, curiosity maxed out.

"How long have you been taking lessons?" He addressed his wife, forgetting to acknowledge the stranger in their sitting room.

"A while..."

"You never told me?" That came out more whiny than he'd intended.

Shiho was turning redder with every question. "I wanted to play together..." She grumbled the last few words, "butIsuck."

He echoed her words, mischief and mirth taking over his features, "yeah, I could hear your bow shaking from down the-"

"Shut up, would you?"


End file.
